This Cd is musically very boring. The songs tend to literally use two notes and repeat one of those notes 90% of the time. The rhythm is catchy but it's all re-used from old Asphyx and sped up. You hear too much vocal and not much guitar or even song.

This album is so shitty I can't believe they put the Asphyx name on it.

Obviously it's very much influenced by the newer metal, it sounds a lot like the angry *core that comes out of the underground these days. Save your money go buy the new Autopsy instead.

Nice review 'Rapist. I feared this would be the case, though I really enjoyed "Death...The Brutal Way" Back to the review, I especially like the slap at the "We're Asphyx...you're all shit" baloney - that type of crap MAY have flown in 1987 or so...but now it smacks of a death-metal Manowar and is just silly for band whose best work is older than many of their modern fans.

I haven't listened to this, so I take you guys at your word, but how does a legendary band break out of a slump and return to form with Death the Brutal Way and then instantly go back to crap? Metal is retarded. It's almost like an accident.

That probably has a bit to do with why this album sucks. Without Wannes in the band, they only have one original member, Bob Bagchus (remember, van Drunen joined after they'd been around for a while and written most of the songs that appeared on the first two albums).

Honestly, Death... the Brutal Way was okay, but didn't impress me that much, especially compared to their old albums. Eric Daniels' guitar work had a lot to do with why those albums were awesome: dark riffs with a medieval torture atmosphere, enough melody to keep things musical and varied, but more than brutal enough to stand up to the other titans of the time, and of course, that unmistakably low-fi, buzzing hellstorm of a guitar tone. He also wrote pretty much all of the s/t album, and if I'm not mistaken, he had a pretty big hand in writing a lot of stuff on the first two albums as well.

It's for that reason that I haven't been paying too much attention to this newly formed facsimilie of old Asphyx. It's got some brutal vocals (van Drunen is undoubtedly my favorite death metal vocalist), and they hit all of the Asphyx trademarks (fast proto-black metal tremolo riffs running violently into epic slow stuff, great sense of groove, dark atmosphere), but that's about all they do: copy the best parts of The Rack without doing too much else. It's better than Hail of Bullets, but not by much in my estimation. I've had a lot more fun listening to newer bands like Horrendous, Crypticus, Decrepitaph, Vallenfyre, Blaspherian, and Disma (the latter three also are based around older musicians reliving the glory of late '80s/early '90s death metal, but they make way better music). I'd file new Asphyx in with the Vasaeleths and Deathevokations of the world: aesthetically pleasing, but pretty hollow when it comes to the actual meat of old school songwriting.

Asphyx albums always have a title track and then a bunch of riffs that they pinch off into songs. I know this is an unpopular view but a lot of older Asphyx quite honestly isn't that good or is just badly arranged. I imagine a bunch of drunk Dutch guys cutting the tape when it sounds OK and then going off to do whatever. The exception is Embrace the Death which is like a real album. I don't understand why more people aren't singing this one's praises but the usual praise is for The Rack and Last One on Earth, both of which are pretty mediocre.